


Yet we are the world-movers and world-shakers

by Ash_Cassidy97



Series: This is Your Heart [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash_Cassidy97/pseuds/Ash_Cassidy97
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was not a hero.</p>
<p>Luke would disagree but he’d left anyway.</p>
<p>She’s not a princess any longer.</p>
<p>Han would agree with that, but she’d told him to chase down her son and he had and he’s dead.</p>
<p>She would stand in the hangar bay and glare at the Falcon, before Rey took it and left to chase down another dream. It was as close to mourning that she would let herself get. Han would’ve walked into hell if she asked, but his feet were his own and she never said to bring her son back alive. Splitting hairs didn’t kill her guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yet we are the world-movers and world-shakers

She was not a hero.

 

Luke would disagree but he’d left anyway.

 

She’s not a princess any longer.

 

Han would agree with that, but she’d told him to chase down her son and he had and he’s dead.

 

She would stand in the hangar bay and glare at the  _ Falcon _ , before Rey took it and left to chase down another dream. It was as close to mourning that she would let herself get. Han would’ve walked into hell if she asked, but his feet were his own and she never said to bring her son back alive. Splitting hairs didn’t kill her guilt.

 

She had fought a war and built peace, or so she had thought. She had a son with a man she loved, and that should have been the end of the story. A fairytale ending. The universe didn’t work like that.

 

The universe acted like a fussy old aunt that grumbled when you tried to change its ways. It didn’t mean to be cruel. It’s just old and you’re tiny. At least, that’s how people explain it.

 

Leia pulled on her boots every morning and shrugged on her tunics and tried so damn hard to breathe peace into her hallways the way that that damnable ship wheezed its way through solar systems.

 

She is not Luke. She did not study with Yoda. Her resume includes the words “well, I was there,” because she was the one  _ there _ . She did not grow up in sand or engine parts. She grew up among politicians.

 

She is not a hero.

 

She feels old and crusty, blinking down on Poe and Finn’s youthful, hopeful expressions. She checks herself before she can wonder if she was ever that young. She was. She faced a man in black. She won a war. She earned her old, crusty nature and the way that she still feels too young under General stars and too ancient at the same time.

 

This was not her first war. It might be her last war, but it was not a war that she was going to pass on to the next generation the way that Kenobi and Yoda had thrust the Jedi mantle onto Luke’s sturdy shoulders. And she wouldn’t blame Luke. He’d done a much better job than anybody else she knows.

 

She knew enough of the Force to be able to sense his guilt when he was billions of lightyears away. She really wanted to know more of the Force so she could throw a nice heavy rock at his head (it was sturdy enough to withstand it).

 

“Thinking about your brother?” Poe asked, because he was one of the few that never forgot that their grand leader had feelings, had nightmares, had  _ hope  _ like the rest of them.

 

“Yep,” Leia said calmly, rocking her legs back and forth over the ledge. They looked out across the dense forests of D’Qar. “I hope Rey kicks his ass.”

 

Poe grinned. Rey had stayed a week before she had left. It had been enough.

 

“I miss him.” 

 

Poe kept his mouth shut for once because ‘who?’ was not the right question. It could have been any of her three family members, could’ve been all of them. It doesn’t really matter, does it?  **Poe didn’t follow Leia because she was a legend; he followed her in spite of it** .

 

Poe leaned forward, resting his weight on his knees, using his elbows. He didn’t try to hug her. He squeezed her hand lightly. Leia gripped back.

 

“How’s Finn settling in?”

 

Leia liked the man, not ‘ex-stormtrooper’ or ‘rebel’. She thought it was time that he chose his own labels. Leia had been careful to keep her distance, in case she scared the shy man. She thought he was a giant, but he was solid.

 

“Doing alright.” Poe sighed, like he’d been angry so long the angry had just worn at him. “Worried that he can’t work. Worries that we’re gonna kick him out.” It had turned into a three hour debate about the ideologies of the Resistance. “In the end, I let Jessika handle it. She told him to sleep, get through the next week minute by minute.”

 

Jessika used to be a slave. Her owners used to be alive. Poe used to not have a scar above his left elbow and Leia used to have less headaches. But they were worth it, all of them.

 

“Good,” Leia said shortly. “Glad he’s getting used to us.”

 

Poe laughed dryly. “Finn didn’t know what to do with soap. I don’t think he’ll ever get used to us.”

 

“You did.”

 

Poe had come off military service. Leia come from a war where the best escapes were sometimes through the trash. Luke had survived hopothermia by swimming in intestinal fluids. And Han . . . Han was one of the best of them at it, at living by the skin of his teeth.

 

Poe waved it off, but Leia still remembered when he’d been worried that they’d throw away BB-8 because he’d broken something or other. Poe hadn’t been used to Generals who danced in canteens and armies who swore by her name on little pay.

 

“Think he’ll teach her?”

 

“Maybe.” Leia didn’t know.

 

She had a lightsaber in the back of her closet. It wasn’t dusty but she wasn’t the teacher for Rey. Luke had taught her what she knew but she was not a Jedi at the moment. She had a fire in her stomach and soldiers at her back.

 

The Jedi are peacekeepers and her husband was dead.

 

She was not Obi-Wan Kenobi. Do not ask her to be.

 

That is not to say that she didn’t take the old thing out and wave it around in her free time, because there was a fucking war on, and she was not picky over her advantages. That is not to say that she didn’t meditate and feel the Force.

 

“I think Finn wants to send a message to other stormtroopers, if they want to defect to our side.”

 

“Think they will?”

 

“I think if we just told them that we’ll give them medical support without pain or recycling them, we could win this war.”

 

She often wondered if she had made the right decision, to let Han go alone. She was a General in the war, and he’d just been a drifter, an old smuggler. Ironically, he’d been the kinder parent. He’d grown up around old ship parts and she’d grown up under rigid royalty (she’d grown up with a blaster in one hand). He’d been a kindness.

 

She had a lightsaber in her closet, but rarely was it clipped to her belt ( **she stuck it in her left shoe more often than naught** ). There was a war on. Stop asking her to be so goddamn picky. Lightsabers, the Force, are tools.

 

Luke came back in the end, half a step behind Rey, cowed. Leia nearly laughed her ass off but she was dignified. She hugged Rey. Rey wore the same clothes but it wasn’t the same girl that had left. Leia tucked the young woman under her arm.

 

“Come on. Let’s get some food in you.” She left Poe to deal with Luke because she wanted to be petty for one moment, just one moment in this whole fucking dick of a week.

 

Poe, it turned out, didn’t have a soft spot for the person who caused his friend great anguish over the years. Surprise.

 

“Jessika keeps asking after you,” Leia told her, making sure that she got a healthy serving of food. Force only knows what her brother fed the woman. Luke had been a terrible cook when he left. She wondered if he finally got over that. Doubtful. Han- “How are you?”

 

“Fine,” Rey murmured, poking at her stew. “He told me that I had a family.”

 

Leia took a bite of her food, paying sharp attention. Her brother had hid more than she knew.

 

“He said-he said that my mom came to him. Died in childbirth. She was scared of Kylo Ren. He said that I’m the granddaughter of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Did you know?”

 

“No.”

 

“Why would he abandon me like that?”

 

“Did you ask him?”

 

“He said that he was afraid.”

 

Leia nodded. She was not the decider of Luke’s breaking point. She broke, but she had people, and Luke just had the Force. There’s an irony here. There’s a grand old irony that Obi-Wan went to Tatooine to watch over Luke and have no other attachments. Luke left because he was the uncle to a boy. Leia really really wanted to go back and kick the Old Jedi.

 

“He was,” was all she said finally. Rey shuddered. She wouldn’t cry. “He was scared that Ben fell because he was Dark.”

 

“Master Luke thinks he’s Dark?”

 

“Yep.” Leia rolled her eyes. “My brother is a moron. Ben made his own decisions.” Leia shrugged helplessly. “I’m to blame. Han’s-” she choked- “to blame. But it doesn’t matter now.” Leia touched Rey’s shoulder. “Don’t let him scare you.”

 

“What?”

 

“You’re human. You need people.” Leia didn’t anything more. She knew Poe. She knew Finn. Rey was never going to be alone.

 

“He told me that my mom came to him pregnant. It was after Kylo Ren. My mom died, and he dropped me off on Jakuu, because he thought I’d be safe.” Leia wrapped an arm around Rey. “I wasn’t safe,” she whispered. 

 

“My brother is an idiot. You will always have a place here, I promise,” Leia said firmly.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome. Come on, bed.” Leia handed the woman off to Poe and Finn and went to track down her brother.

 

He was meditating in a spare room. He looked aggressively peaceful. Damn moron that he was.

 

“I know,” he said.

 

“Do you really now?”

 

“I hurt her, like I knew I would.”

 

Leia stood there for a moment, shaken by how she could be related to a bloody nerf-herder.

 

“You  _ moron _ ,” she barked out. “You motherfucking, bantha birthing, star crossing  _ moron _ .” She didn’t get paid enough for this shit. “Rey is hurt because she had a family and they left her on a planet where she became a slave.”

 

“I had reasons.” But he was shifty.

 

“You gave her away because Kylo Ren was killing Jedi potentials. I know.” Leia sighed. “The best you can do is to repent and for Force sake, train the girl.”

 

“I will.”

 

“Good.” Leia left. She couldn’t say anything of Han or anything else.

 

“Did it go well?” Finn asked the next day, sidling up to Leia

 

“It did. How are you settling in?”

 

“Good.” He hesitated. “I’m worried about Poe.”

 

“I am too.”

 

And just like that, her day had begun once more.

 

Here’s a lesson: there’s always somebody to help, some way that you can do better.

 

Here’s another: You can’t save the whole world but you can save enough.

 

Leia planted her feet when there was a war, wouldn’t move for nothing. Her husband got itchy feet but she danced in the canteen. It was shit pay and shit food, but it was war. War shouldn’t be for nothing.

 

Leia wasn’t a hero, wasn’t a princess, and she sure as shit wasn’t Jedi. She was not a peacekeeper, but she had a lightsaber in her left boot, and a blaster on her hip. There was kindness tattooed across her collarbones, hope reaching out from her shoulder blades, and duty burned against her ribs.

 

She had a dead husband, a wookie, a few Jedi, pilots, a young man with fire, and a handful of other folk just wanting to do some good. It made all the damn difference in the world.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t like Leia all that much when I started this series, I’ll admit. I liked her in the books. I didn’t like her in the Force Awakens. and then I wrote Poe. And I saw why thousands of people would follow her.
> 
> I started to not write Jedi Leia and then I remembered the actual cannon and yeah. So unbelievably not sorry. Leia was a badass Jedi by the time she died, reaching rank of Master. Luke didn’t train her completely, another Jedi did.
> 
> Me: Nah, Leia’s not a Jedi, least not according to Disney. And I’m trying so hard to wear the mickey ears.  
> All Books: Um, no.  
> Poe: I will cut you.  
> Me: Bitch please, you’re still aching from the last crash.  
> Poe: Yes, but he’d do it. *Finn casually powers up lightsaber*  
> Me: Point.
> 
> “He’s fine. Han shot first”-Leia Organa is an actual quote so fuck you, Georgie (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force). And that right there is why Leia is best and why I will never forgive Disney for chucking the expanded universe.
> 
> I feel like half of this ended up into Firefly references.


End file.
